no consoles

[occam2003]

I have been playing around with Gentoo 1.4 rc2 and rc3. I have been able to solve most problems - but now I am stuck:
1) when booting, the screen goes blank but Gentoo loads ok (I check the logs from my other Linux system on the computer) except for a warning "unable to open an initial console" in /var/log/messages.
2) in auth.log, the message set .. agetty[12..]: /dev/tty1: No such file or directory for tty1 to tty6 is repeated every 10 seconds.
3) in daemon.log, I find ..init: Id "c1" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes for c1 to c6; repeated every 5 minutes.
The daemon.log messages disappeared when I uncommented the
DE:S12345:respawn:/sbin/devfsd /dev -fg
line in /etc/inittab.

Keyboard works, mouse light is lit, but where is the cause of the problem??

[scotte]

Did you possibly unconfigure VT and console terminals in your kernel?

I have the following in .config:

CONFIG_VT=y
CONFIG_VT_CONSOLE=y
CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE=y

In menuconfig: CONFIG_VT* is under Character devices, CONFIG_VGA* is under Console drivers.

[occam2003]

I checked - those items are configured =y.
I have also compared the .config file with the one I use for the other Linux (4.18 kernel): the differences are:

kernel 2.18 2.20
===================
DEV_FS n y
DEV_FS_MOUNT n y
DEV_PTS_FS y n
CONFIG_FB y n
CONFIG_HOTPLUG n y
..and things to support new toys such as a digital camera.

I also use LILO (it has always worked, so far..).
I have tried with the Gentoo /boot as a separate partition, and as part of the Gentoo root partition.

Please, more suggestions!

[occam2003]

Further experimentation has shown that for "my" kernel devfs has "devfs boot option: 0x1" while the kernel in 1.4 rc3 stage 3 produces the log message "devfs boot option: 0x0".
By copying the "gentoo" kernel from the live-CD to /boot and specifying it, I can boot into Gentoo; though without being able to install the ethernet module (8139too).
Therefore I believe that either my kernel compilation is bad, the kernel vanilla-sources cannot produce a 'good' kernel for me, or I set some kernel configuration parameter incorrectly (I have tried 4 times already..).
Where can I find the .config file used for the 1.4 rc3 gentoo live-CD kernel?
And, has anyone else experienced "my" type of problems - and if so, what was the solution?